A few months ago I mentioned that I was serving this site from a pair of Minisforum MS-01 mini-PCs. The MS-01 is a smallish PC with an Intel laptop CPU, 2 Gigabit Ethernet interfaces, 2 10 GbE SFP+ interfaces, and a low-profile PCIe slot.
I was able to get amazingly good performance–almost 60 Gbps– using a single MS-01s as a web server, but it required adding a 2-port Mellanox 100 GbE NIC to the PCIe slot. Unfortunately, the NIC drew more power than the rest of the machine combined and needed forced-air cooling to stay working. It was fun to see how fast a glorified laptop could go, but it’s time to yank the NICs and save a bit of power and heat. My wiring closet is running close to its power and heat limit, and I’d like to trim 100-150W out of there over the next few weeks.

scottstuff.net

The Minisforum MS-01 mini-PCs equipped with Intel i5-12600H and i9-13900H CPUs can deliver up to 60 Gbps performance as web servers with added NICs. However, the high power consumption and additional cooling required by the NICs led to their removal, significantly reducing power draw and heat. The i9-13900H, with a superior PCIe bus, outperformed its counterpart despite the minimal idle power difference. The primary challenge remains the spotty post-sales support from Minisforum.

Minisforum MS-01 Power Use